It’s the end of 2019 and like it or not, social media isn’t going anywhere as Facebook has proven year over year. If you are in marketing, public relations or any form of sales or communications role, you have to face it that you need to know how all this social media stuff works. With that said, Facebook is changing once again! I know it’s hard to believe but they feel the need for change is a revolving door.
In your role at work, it is your job to constantly look at the analytics of everything you do, right? If not, we should talk. Whether you are running Facebook ads or relying on the organic reach of Facebook only, you need to understand that your stats might not have made a true change, as in decline. I bet you are glad you are reading this now!
Facebook Organic Impressions and Paid Impressions
In case you don’t use Facebook’s paid advertisement let me explain how their impressions work. And for those that have used any of their paid versions of advertisement and have been “winging” it let me shed some light on what you should know and help you better understand your results.
Facebook’s ad impressions are counted by the number of times your ad is on the screen for the first time. We are only discussing impressions which is one of the forms of calculations and how you decide to pay for these services. As I mentioned, it is calculated for the first time it is on the screen, which includes if someone scrolls back up and sees it again. We all do this if our brain is still waiting for our coffee to kick in, and it says, “Wait what was that” and we scroll back up. Now you might be thinking, does this still count as one impression if the same person from the same IP and same device see it twice in one day? The answer is no. That would count as 2 impressions as it was delivered twice.
Ad impressions are calculated differently for mobile ads. Your ads are calculated for mobile as to when they are delivered to the device and not scrolling or ‘seen’. Remember this is for impressions only, not CPC (cost per click).
Now, what does this have to do with organic reach? Up until now, the organic impressions have been counted for each time they appeared on the screen. This, of course, makes us all so happy and makes us think our organic reach is out of this world! Well now with the change of organic impressions being measured the same way as paid impressions you might see your impressions go down. This will make you think your social reach is declining when in reality it isn’t. On the other hand, you might see that your drop-in impressions won’t reflect on your engagement stats and you might think your impressions to engagement ratio is pretty fantastic. To the untrained eye, this might make you look really good, when in reality not much has changed. Just be ready to explain the drop in impressions to your boss. Just say, “It’s not me, it’s Facebook.” However, I would have more to back that up, like this blog.
Effective Facebook Launch Date
Those of us that have been doing this awhile know that Facebook won’t tell us when to expect to see this change. I think it’s their way of trying to be like Google. Nobody really knows how Google works, we just try our best to figure it out, right? If you manage multiple accounts as we do you, you will notice that some pages are affected earlier than others and one day they all miraculously look the same. Just be prepared for a shock in your organic impressions and understand why. As we don’t know when it’s coming, we just know it’s coming soon.
